Struggling With Animation / Section Plane

oo7ml

Hi, i have a created a model of carpark (extension) that is made up of about 100 different groups and components that i need to animate (Section Plane) into the model to show a construction sequence. The car park already has 3 levels built and i am trying to show the animation for the extension of another level on top.

I am not sure what the best method is to use when section planing items, and as you can see in the video i’ve made below, it’s starting to go wrong very early

I plan on spending the full weekend on learning how to do this correctly, so i would greatly appreciate any help that you could give to me on this, thank you.

MY APPROACH / PLAN
01 - i’ve gone and hidden all of the components / groups that makes up the car park level / extension.
02 - when i need to animate (bring in) a component / group:
02.1 - i unhide the component / group in the current scene
02.2 - add two section planes at either end of the component / group
02.3 - set the invisible plane as Active Cut
02.4 - hide the group and update the current scene
02.5 - unhide the group and set the visible plane as Active Cut and update scene

QUESTIONS
01 - should i use a different approach compared to my approach above… someone mentioned on youtube that you should add two section planes to all of your components first, and set the invisible plane on all components as the Active Cut before starting the scene animation… and then just make the visible plane the active cut in each new scene
02 - as seen in the video below… why are some of my components coming in on scenes that they shouldn’t be in (and coming in backwards)
03 - can you go back and add something into a group that you have already section planed in… if so, do i need to update all scenes when i’ve added something to a group that has already been section planed
04 - how do you turn off section panes from your animation / scenes so that they don’t show in your animation when it is playing… i’ve tried turning them off view menu and updating each scene… but they eventually come back again

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyU9H_PcE-w

Thanks in advance for your help.

cotty

You don't need to hide anything to use the animation function with section cuts...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nKyWomUYxs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sQ-7dt95yw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khsFvyXLe-Q